Eleven years ago, Eclipse was one of the original Natural Selection battlefields. Tight corridors, multiple Hive spawns, iconic rooms, Eclipse was one of the greatest maps ever made for the original Half-Life mod.

Marine Start

Now, we can all return to Eclipse. Painstakingly recreated, the map is faithful to the original while allowing for the evolution of Natural Selection 2 gameplay. By taking advantage of Spark’s modern rendering techniques and UWE’s art resources, the mapping team has been able to remake every corner of Eclipse in exquisite detail.

Triad

The team that built Eclipse was led by Jake ‘Jonacrab’ Smith. Under the artistic direction of Cory, Jake drew together work from mappers Oliver ‘Dux’ Hobbs, Michael ‘Olmy’ Shouten, Andrew ‘Insane’ Jones, Marc ‘Sgt Barlow’ Newton, and art from Sergey and Yuri from Fox3D.

Looking towards East Foyer

Eclipse is included as part of Build 262, which was just released on Steam. Build 262 is free for all existing players of Natural Selection 2, and includes a bunch of other improvements to the game. Here is the full changelog:

Fixes
Fixed players sometimes being stuck in command station at round start
Fixed Infestation blobs blocking commander view
Server Browser now highlights player count yellow if the server is semi-full due to reserved slots.
Removed texture streaming option from main menu since it wasn’t doing anything
Fixed all structures being outlined blue when on overhead mode as spectator
Fixed projectiles colliding with invisible movement collision group
Fixed ECHO_HARVESTER tooltip missing when echoing an Harvester
Fixed accidental use of voice order keys while ESC menu is open
Fixed bug where marine buy menu did not close when player was Stomped
Fixed Stab not having a custom icon
Fixed round start music not playing due to incorrect path
Fixed WhipBomb showing killed with BileBomb in console
Fixed loading screens using the wrong art sometimes
Fixed commander bindings reverting to default if a player joins a server before opening the options menu
Features
Added new map: Eclipse
Added new main menu background
Added egg counter for Alien Commander in the top of the commander interface
Added Hive skill and level stats under name in main menu
Added support for new structures in ScenarioHandler. Added one other check path that works.
Added link to forums by clicking logo
Added remixed NS1/NS2 main menu theme

Balance
Ammo packs now refill all weapons instead of only the active one

Optimizations
Limit hit effect messages to 100 per second
Correctly limit max resources network field to 100 per player
Reduced network traffic generated by static structures
Implemented extra precaching to reduce incidence of hitching at the start of rounds
Optimized network traffic produced by Insight spectator system
Minor optimizations for skulk movement (optimized wall traces and removed predict wall walking)
Improvements
Insight spectator system now outlines players in overhead view by default
Replaced “request enzyme” with “request drifter” in the Alien ‘commo-rose’
Servers with cheats enabled no longer send data to the Hive stat tracking system

Balance:
Reduced Flamethrower damage by 18%
Reduced Minigun damage by 20%
Reduced Grenade Launcher splash radius by 20%
Reduced Cyst auto build time by 2 seconds
Cysts can no longer be built by Drifters and and only 1 per Hive will auto construct (Gorges can still use heal spray on them)
Reduced Babbler hitbox size to make it fit the actual model size better